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Windows Subsystem Linux setup

Scott Spence on April 28, 2018

I'm a Windows user, I have been a Linux user as well but I have found that Windows is a bit less neckbeardy for me, both have their pros and cons. ...
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p-mcgowan • Edited

Nice article - I think the WSL is amazing, and a great step in the right direction for Windows.

I've had great experiences with nvm - it's a node version manager which lets you install multiple version of node concurrently. Works really well when different projects use different versions of node - on Linux (and likely WSL) you can even hook it up to automatically switch node versions in certain directories, and anything you install globally (npm install -g <package>) is installed only for the version currently selected.

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Scott Spence • Edited

Thanks @pmcgowan , like I said I had permissions issues with nvm so n was a great alternative.

I use nvm on my work MBP with no issues 👌

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p-mcgowan • Edited

Whoops, I guess I should brush up on my reading abilities... Might look into n for Windows then!

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Rob Waller

This is really interesting, thanks. Definitely going to need to look into this.

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Scott Spence

It's been a revelation @robdwaller if you're on Windows and don't want to dick around with virtual boxes then this is a great alternative 👌

I've switched from Ubuntu to Debian now it was as simple as installing from the Windows store and setting the default distro from PowerShell

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Rob Waller

Where can I get debian?

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Scott Spence

If you're on Windows 10 fall creators update or greater then you should be able to type "Linux" into the Windows store and you will be presented with all the variants available:

  • Ubuntu
  • Debian
  • Open SUSE
  • Open SUSE Enterprise?
  • Kali

I'm not certain of the names as I can't check right now 🏢💻

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Jorge Gomez

Nice article Scott, I've been using WSL for a couple of months now, and it works really well.

Also may I ask, is fish running inside the WSL shell itself or is it another application like "hyper"?

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Scott Spence

Hey @jorgee97 yeah, you can install fish via bash in WSL.

You can do sudo apt search fish see what version is available then install with sudo apt install fish

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Daniel Albuschat

Still waiting for the day that native Linux docker runs on WSL. But I'm afraid it's never gonna happen ;)